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Happy New Year, Happy New Moon!

Happy New Year and Happy New Moon!

If you make resolutions at the New Year, how can you make sure they’re going to work?

January 1st 2014 at 11.15 am GMT brings the new moon in Capricorn: a ‘supermoon’ – meaning that the moon is close to earth in her orbit. Astrologically, this increases the influence of the moon and heightens your ability to tap into the subconscious, clear out what you don’t want and create more of what you really do want. The new moon does not ’cause’ our affirmations, wishes and goals to succeed, its new phase merely reflects a time when everything on earth and in nature supports new growth.

New Moon ‘wishes’ or affirmations are statements that support your goals, (rather than the goals themselves). Affirmations work when there is no contradiction between what you affirm for and what you believe about the affirmation.

For example, if you want to stop smoking in the New Year, your goal might be: ‘I intend to be a non-smoker by February 1st 2014’.

An affirmation (amongst others) that supports this goal might be: ’I love making healthy choices that make me feel good’

Each time you say the affirmation, you’re re-minding yourself of something you already believe is true.

But if you create the goal above and affirm it with something like: ‘I hate smoking’ or ‘I am now a non-smoker’, you might get some inner resistance to your statement. The subconscious would have difficulty ‘believing’ you because it knows that your conscious statement isn’t entirely true: you may still enjoy a cigarette even if it’s your goal to stop, and it knows for sure you are not yet a ‘non-smoker’!

The problem with resistance to an affirmation is that it automatically disempowers us: when we meet with inner resistance, we can’t move forward towards our goal. This is what happens sometime around Jan 10th, when we start to feel like the grand plans are going pear-shaped…..

What can be done to deal with this conundrum? (The same conundrum which, incidentally is one of the prime reasons that Law Of Attraction books such as The Secret can be frustratingly difficult to apply).

Well, we can continue to create affirmations that we know for sure are believed by the subconscious mind. This works but only takes us so far……. Enter, ‘af-form-ations’, a marvelously inventive approach to affirmations originated by Dr Noah St John, who after reaching a rock-bottom moment of frustration when trying to work out why he wasn’t succeeding, had a eureka moment and realised that:

‘you create your life in two ways: by the statements you say to yourselves and others, and by the questions you ask yourself and others.’

Dr Noah tells us that that the mind has an automatic search function. It’s referred to by psychologists as the ‘embedded presupposition factor’, meaning that our brain has an automatic expectation of circumstances, events, relationships and outcomes, hard-wired in from our social and genetic conditioning.

The brain automatically searches for answers to anything we ask, whether positive or negative.

Why does this always happen to me? (A question we rarely ask when things have just worked out swimmingly)

In areas of life that challenge us, the questions we ask of ourselves can be negative: if we find ourselves in a situation we don’t want to be in yet again, we usually respond by asking ‘ Why does this always happen?’ ‘ Why am I so stupid/unlovable/ bad person/ a failure/ broke again? etc etc?’

Naturally, being the amazing super-computer it is, your brain automatically begins to search for answers to the above questions, quickly coming up with hard evidence from the outside world as to why you are indeed stupid/ bad/ wrong/ rejectable!

Up until recently in human history, we have tended to believe the evidence presented to us in the outside world as ‘true’. When there are underlying expectations of failure lurking beneath our conscious goals, we have an underlying belief that drives us quickly to our end point of failure. Except…… except…. Yes, it’s only a belief! This means it’s not real or true in anyone else’s world except for our own personal universe.

Dr Noah’s afformations are thus a beauteous and elegant way to ask a better question of ourselves. Instead of ‘ I hate smoking’ ( we might not, even if we want to stop) we can ask ‘Why do I dislike smoking?’ (tons of reasons will validate this even if you’re still doing it.)

Instead of ‘I am now a non-smoker’ (really?), you could ask ‘Why do I love being free of cigarettes?’

Instead of ‘why am I so stupid/ unhealthy/ unlucky in love/ broke?’, try any of the following:

‘Why am I so clever/bright/ creative?

Why am I so healthy? Why do I make such healthy choices? Why do I love the healthiest food and exercise?

Why am I lovable? Why am I able to picture myself happy with a soul/play/work mate?

Afformations enable us to fill in what Noah calls ‘the belief gap’ – an area of the subconscious that is entrained by previous experiences and social/familial conditioning to expect difficulty, set-backs or failure, limiting our ability to set goals in that area no matter what we desire for it.

More importantly, afforming, – asking empowering questions of yourself, enables you to take actions that progress you towards your destination goal or resolution.

A Short Re-Minder:

Affirmations, (statements that support your goals) and new –moon wishes work well in areas where there is no resistance from the beliefs of the powerful subconscious.

Use afformations in areas in which you have previously been unsuccessful in goal-setting, – where there’s a ‘belief gap’.

When you get to the old familiar bottom-line question of ‘Why is this happening again?’, track the feeling you get and identify it as closely as possible: do you feel sad, bad, guilty, stuck, wrong, insecure, fearful, or something else that stops you in your tracks?

‘Catch’ the feeling and identify it with a word or two, then deliberately turn it around on its head: your brain just found you evidence of something disempowering – that’s all. (It’s not true!)

Always use ‘Why’ as your question opener as this tells your brain to start looking for all the ways the question is already true.

Keep a notebook so you can track your afformation questions and notice where your brain brings you evidence, ideas and fresh perspective.

Notice how much easier it is to create supportive ‘beliefs’ and expectations when you set your brain an empowering rather than disempowering task.

(This work is the same as noticing more of the good in your life).

Good Luck in using afformations, and wishing you an absolutely wonderful, peaceful, loving and inspirational New 2014!